Dvivedi, Manilal Nabhubhai [Comm.]: The Yoga-sūtra of Patanjali: (translation, with introduction, appendix, and notes based upon several authentic commentaries) (Bombay, 1890)

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by powerful application produce the necessary conditions for
their independent action.

HI. The incidental cause is not the real cause in
the action of Prakrti; from thence is the removal of
obstacles, like a husbandman.

The incidental causes in the production of material results
are our virtuous and vicious actions (Dharmadharma). It may
be asked if prakrti does all by its action and produces trans-
formations equal to its previous sanskaras, where is the use of
individual good or bad actions? The performance of such
acts is not at all useful in setting up the action of prakrti',
but it only prepares the way for its free action by removing,
if good, the obstruction in its way. An illustration in point is
that of the husbandman who only removes the obstacles in
the way of the water which then passes of itself from one spot
to another.

IV. Created minds proceed from the sense of being
alone.

The question at issue follows directly from the foregoing
considerations. If performance of good acts removes all
obstacles and prepares the way for the free action of prakrti,
a Yogin whose vision reveals to him all he has still to go
through may wish, as it were, to multiply himself and thus
undergo at one and the same time the fruition of all that is to
happen. In this case he will require as many minds as there
are bodies; and the question is whence do these come, it being
taken for granted that a Yogin can duplicate his gross body.
Such a Yogin has full command over Mahattattva, the root of
all egoism and everything else which makes up ' mind.' The
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